Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Who will be taking you home tonight?

Every weekday as I’m driving to Warwick through the never-ending road
works, minding my own business in the horrendously long tail back of
traffic, I glance to the edge of the roadside to be presented with a
photo of a small child next to some text: “My Daddy works here, please
slow down so that he can come home tonight”. It slows me down every
time. This emotive type of effect is widely played upon in road safety
materials.

“One for the road?” In 2013,15% of all deaths caused
by road traffic accidents in the UK involved at least one driver over
the limit (Department for Transport, 2015). As a result, many police
forces have focused on the reduction of drink-drive related accidents
through drink-drive campaigns. One such campaign involved the production
of the above image, placed on billboards around the UK and plastered
over social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

The
advertisement provides an example of a fear appeal. The inclusion of a
funeral hearse is an extreme fear appeal, followed by an ambulance and
police car. These vehicles and the people stood with them represent
fears common amongst the masses: death, injury and prison. The inclusion
of the taxi provides an alternative behaviour that is a realistic
action for the target of the influence. This inclusion of a target
behaviour to overcome the fear enhances the effectiveness of the
advertising and is more likely to result in a change in attitude. This
provides an example of protection motivation theory (Maddux &
Rogers, 1983) whereby the target of influence can see the possible fears
related to drink-driving, desires to protect the self from these
negative fears and therefore takes a taxi home (target behaviour).

In
a study by Maddux and Rogers (1983), participants were assigned to one
of two groups. Each group was given an essay about the consequences of
smoking; one group was presented with a low severity essay and the other
a high severity essay. After reading the essay, the participants were
asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their intentions to reduce
or eliminate smoking. Additionally, a measure of fear was included and
this was averaged to produce an overall fear score for each participant.
The mean scores for each group are shown below.

Figure 1. A bar chart to show mean scores of ratings of dangerousness of smoking in the high severity and low severity essay groups.

This shows that participants who read the high severity essay had higher fear scores than participants who read the low severity essay. It is thought that this fear that has been produced will then reduce the target behaviour (in this case, smoking). This is an example of the protection motivation theory (Maddux & Rogers, 1983).

This effect is the aim of the drink-drive advert above; a high impact fear appeal aiming to reduce the number of people who choose to drink-drive.